In response to the Thursday editorial “Don’t surrender streets to these salty scalawags”: Pirates as a theme for a festival is not as bad as you think.
Cayman Island BWI has held an international pirate festival for the last 25-plus years.
They tried to lose the pirate theme a few years back and found that the lost revenue as well as the disappointment of the people proved more than enough to embrace pirates as a theme once again.
Seattle has had pirates as a mainstay for 57 years, the Seattle Seafair Pirates. If you think that the Seafair festival is only a day you are very wrong. Seafair starts with the pirates landing at Alki Beach the first week of July and ends in the middle of August.
Those pirates attend dozens of parades and events, including hospitals and nursing homes, to spread the good cheer.
When this is over they travel to different places Mexico, Taiwan, Cayman BWI, and Canada just to name a few to promote the goodwill of the Northwest.
As we speak, these pirates are running the Holiday Treasure Chest campaign in Kenmore, which is fairly close to Everett. This campaign reaches out to people who do not have anything for the holidays. They supply toys and food to needy families. The warehouse is huge and I believe that they serve more than 100 families every year with enough food for a week as well as trees, presents and all the trimmings.
How can this be bad? How can people like this be a bad role model for a festival?
So when looking at pirates maybe we should have an open mind and an open heart.
Here is a list of at least 25 pirate festivals around the U.S. and abroad.
http://www.thepiratesrealm.com/pirate%20festivals.html
Peter Klasell
Lynnwood
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